The future of engineering ops: AI agents that listen, write and ship with Alexandra Sunderland

The interface is shifting from apps to conversations

For years, we clicked through dashboards to get insights.

In this episode, Alexandra Sunderland, VP Engineering at Fellow.ai, shows why that is changing. With model context protocol servers and a few no-code bricks, you can ask the question directly, then ship the change without opening five tools.

Welcome to This New Way, where leaders show the exact AI workflows they run, then we turn them into easy tutorials you can replicate.

Keep scrolling for two companion tutorials that mirror Alexandra’s demos ⬇️

Tutorial 1: Your daily Chief of Staff brief in Slack, powered by Zapier + Fellow

Why it matters: Leaders can’t be in every meeting. You still need the decisions, blockers, and risks before 9:15 a.m.

1. Create the trigger.
   In Zapier, add a Schedule trigger for every weekday at 9:00 a.m.
   

2. Fetch yesterday’s transcripts.
   Use Webhooks by Zapier, GET your Fellow endpoint for meetings you attended or have access to, filter to “yesterday.”
   

3. Ask an LLM to think like your chief of staff.
   Add “AI by Zapier.” Prompt: “You are my chief of staff. From these transcripts, return: critical updates, decisions, risks, cross-team dependencies, open questions. Output markdown with sections and bullet points.”
   

4. Format for action.
   Add a small formatter step to cap each section to five bullets, and append a “Who needs to know” list with tagged owners.
   

5. Send to Slack.
   Use Slack’s “Send a message” action to send you a private DM. Title it “Daily Brief, {date}.”
   

6. Extend to projects.
   Add a second Zap triggered when a project recap is posted to a shared channel. Run a targeted prompt: “Detect blockers, missing owners, scope creep, risks. If found, notify me immediately.”

Pro tips:

• Keep the prompt opinionated. Example criteria: “A risk is only high if it delays launch past date X.”

• Add a step that creates a Linear ticket when the brief includes “bug” or “customer-impacting.”

See it in action: Watch the demo here

Tutorial 2: Replace a dashboard with Claude + Linear’s MCP Server

Why it matters: Busy execs do not need another dashboard. You need an answer, now, using the freshest Linear data.

1. Connect Claude to Linear with MCP.
   Open Claude, go to the Connector settings, add the Linear connector, then authorize your workspace.

2. Describe your outcome, not the chart.
   For example, ask: “From customer tickets in the last 30 days, show resolution rate by priority, median time in triage, and median time waiting for resolution. Flag outliers.”

3. Iterate with comparative questions.
   Try something like: “Compare the last 30 days to the prior 30. Highlight teams with negative deltas bigger than 15 percent. Explain the likely cause.”

4. Pull multi-source context.
   Upload a CSV of Cursor usage or model stats if you have it, then ask: “Correlate Cursor usage by team with Linear cycle time. Summarize practical insights for the next staff meeting.”

5. Package and share.
   Ask Claude to format a concise briefing with bullets, then export and drop it in your project channel.

Pro tips:

• Use short, metric-first prompts. E.G. “Return a table with columns: team, tickets created, tickets resolved, median triage hours, median resolution hours.”

• Save your best prompts as presets so anyone can run them.

• If you also use GitHub, add that MCP server and ask for the pull request merge rate and review time alongside Linear data.

See it in action: Watch the demo here

AI tools mentioned in this episode:

• Claude with MCP servers (ask questions directly against Linear and other systems)

• Cursor (launch background coding agents from Slack)

• Zapier (AI-enabled workflow builder)

• Fellow (meeting transcripts, decisions, action items, secure by design)

• Slack (VIP notifications for agent updates)

Great playbooks beat great intentions. Save these two workflows, run them this week, then share the wins with your team.

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Until next time,

Aydin Mirzaee
CEO at Fellow.ai & Host of This New Way